Conventionally, during the assembly of motor vehicles the rear brake cables are attached to a parking brake actuating assembly at the automotive final assembly plant because the rear cables must be mounted to the chassis or frame whereas the actuating assembly is mounted above the floor pan member in the vehicle's passenger compartment to facilitate its access by the driver. To attach the brake cables to the actuating assembly, the cables must be advanced up from beneath the floor pan member and then be inserted into cable receiving portions of an equalizer. The equalizer is connected to the manually operable actuator (which may be a hand lever or a foot pedal) of the actuating assembly by a single actuator cable and distributes the tension applied to the actuator cable by operation of the actuator to the two brake cables to affect actuation of the vehicle brakes.
Connecting the cables to the equalizer normally requires an assembly line worker to move the cables up through the floor pan member from below the vehicle, and then move to the inside of the passenger compartment to make the connection between the cable ends and the equalizer. Forcing the worker to undertake these two installation steps instead of one is an inefficiency that it would be desirable to obviate. The problems associated with installing and connecting these brake cables can be amplified in situations where the assembly line procedures require the console that covers the components of the actuating assembly to be installed before connecting the brake cables. In this situation, the worker has no direct access to the equalizer and must "blindly" connect the cable ends to the equalizer. That is, the worker must make this connection based on feel and experience rather than by sight.
To alleviate this blind installation problem, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,219,044 and 5,203,068, both to Siring, disclose an equalizer that has a pair of slots with enlarged open ends. The slots guide the heads of the brake cables (and hence the brake cables themselves) into proper installed positions within the equalizer interior. However, the equalizers disclosed in these two patents have a number of drawbacks. First, the equalizers of these two patents fasten to the vehicle floor and require the additional step of manually releasing the equalizer to allow its movement to tension the installed brake cables. Another drawback is that the equalizer is intended to entirely replace existing equalizers rather than supplement them. As a result, the teachings of these patents cannot be used to help manufacturers improve brake cable connection efficiency without entirely changing equalizers.
Consequently, there exists a need in the art for a parking brake actuating assembly in which the blind installations problems discussed above are overcome without the drawbacks associated with the constructions disclosed in the two above-mentioned Siring patents.